Child’s Play

I see myself as a child–carving pumpkins, getting ready for school, biking into the horizon, coloring with chalk. Everything is painted bright and airy. I hug my mother and my father. They see life in me. My grandmother plays the piano, and I fall into an ecstatic trance. I shoot the soccer ball as if everything depended on it. There are vocab tests and friends and secret lovers. At church the priest is an apostle. I cling to every word because it comes from the mouth of God. All moments are eternity and infinity. All is new.

Billions of years pale in comparison to the purity of youth. “Be as a child.” It is not about dependence on God or about trust (though it is). It is about eternity. “Be as a child” is to say, “Everything is an endless mystery, not to be solved but to be lived.” When you wake up in the morning, trumpets sound. When you walk down the street, angels sing above you. When you get in bed to rest, demons emerge in the dark.

Realism kills us. It takes us away from the real. Realism is a learnt ideology, but idealism is reality. One can’t heal or save a realist. Such an experience is only for the young romantic.